CARSON CITY -- After learning that eight shipments of low-level radioactive waste "inadvertently" traveled through the Spaghetti Bowl interchange in the last quarter of 2000, a lawmaker Monday questioned how the U.S. Department of Energy could be trusted to safely transport high-level waste if Yucca Mountain becomes a nuclear dump.

One of the eight shipments to the Nevada Test Site also traveled via Hoover Dam, another route that is not supposed to be used for transport of low-level waste.

"If we can't trust the oversight ability and promise of the U.S. Department of Energy, who can we trust?" said Assemblywoman Vonne Chowning, D-North Las Vegas.

"They obviously did not do their job. This, to me, is just a sign of what unfortunately, possibly, is going to come in the future."

Chowning made her comments at a meeting Monday of the Assembly Ways and Means Committee to review the budget for the state Agency for Nuclear Projects.

Bob Loux, executive director of the agency, provided a letter to lawmakers from the Nevada Operations Office of the U.S. Department of Energy concerning the shipments of low-level radioactive waste to the Nevada Test Site from October through December.

The letter and accompanying report showed that eight of 134 shipments during the quarter used the inappropriate routes. The shipments came from several federal sites, including Lawrence Livermore Lab in California and Rocky Flats in Colorado.

The quarterly report is provided to the state after the shipments occur. The report provided to lawmakers was received in Loux's office earlier this month.

"In reviewing the data submitted, we have determined that eight shipments inadvertently went through the I-15 and U.S. 95 interchange and one shipment went across the Hoover Dam," said Kathleen Carlson, manager of the agency's Nevada Operations Office.

"We have discussed this matter with the generating sites, and indicated that failure to initiate corrective action may result in the (Nevada Test Site) refusing to accept future waste shipments for disposal."

Loux agreed that the improper use of routes for low-level waste probably is not helping the agency build trust with Nevada residents.

"If the Department of Energy is trying to engender trust, they would do a much better job in trying to ensure these shipments didn't go through he valley or over the dam as we negotiated, and they indicated they would halt," he said.

If the waste dump is built at Yucca Mountain, as many as 3,000 shipments of high-level nuclear waste per year would be taken to the site over 35 years, Loux said.

No decision has been made about whether highways or railways would be used to ship the waste.

Low-level waste, including medical waste such as X-ray materials and contaminated soils, probably is not harmful unless it is ingested, Loux said.

But Chowning said an accident involving high-level waste at the Spaghetti Bowl, the name given to the Interstate 15 and U.S. Highway 95 interchange, could contaminate the downtown core of Las Vegas for many years.

Loux told lawmakers that raising the transportation issue with other states is a major strategy Nevada officials will pursue in trying to stop President Bush and the U.S. Congress from selecting Yucca Mountain, 100 miles northwest of Las Vegas, as the permanent storage site for 77,000 tons of high-level nuclear waste.

The Department of Energy is expected to announce its decision regarding Yucca Mountain late this year or early in 2002, he said.

Gov. Kenny Guinn has proposed spending $5 million to spread word to other states about the dangers of transporting high-level waste along the nation's highways, Loux said.